Monday, December 1, 2014

The Marvel Cinematic Universe Phases 1 & 2 Edition

Welcome back to another addition of The Entertainment Guru News & Views.

A few weeks back, Marvel announced a huge slate of films for their Cinematic Universe's Phase 3 including Guardians Of the Galaxy 2, Avengers 3 & 4, Thor 3, Captain America 3 & Doctor Strange just to name a few. But it got me thinking about Phases 1 and 2. I ranked them in my personal preference to present to you here on the blog. But then I decided to up the ante! So I opened the question up to a few of my friends on Facebook. I want to thank Jay and Jeremy for joining us for the first time. And I would like to welcome back Lori and Jason as well.

I took every one's ranking and assigned points for each. So if a movie was ranked # 1, it got ten points. A # 2 ranking got 9 points and so on and so on. The ten movies in question were Iron Man (1,2,3), Thor (1,2), Captain America (1,2), Hulk (Edward Norton Version), Avengers and the latest addition to the Marvel Universe Guardians Of The Galaxy.

So here we go with the countdown. In at # 10 earning a total of 12 points is Hulk. Both Lori and Jason had it in at # 10 and here is why. "The best part of it was the Tony Stark cameo, all 15 seconds of it." Lori told me. And Jason thought . "It didn't have the right feel, and wasn't fun or exciting."

Number 9 in the rankings goes to Iron Man 2. It earned 16 points in the countdown. It's highest ranking was 6th place, in both my ranking and Jason's. I thoroughly enjoyed Sam Rockwell's performance, but the rest of the movie fell a little flat for me.

Iron Man 3 comes in at Number 8, earning 17 points. "The way they used the Mandarin was classic. It was going to be a hard character to pull off realistically, but Marvel did it" Said Jeremy. A lot of people were disappointed by the way Mandarin was portrayed, definitely not Jeremy!

The original Thor comes in at Number 7 racking up 19 points along the way. "This brought us Loki. And it showed the sarcastic wit of Kat Dennings to the world. And it was directed by Kenneth Branagh" added Lori.

Not far behind Thor comes Thor: The Dark World collecting 24 points. It averaged a 6th place finish in our polls. Which is why it is number six on our list.

At the half way point of the countdown comes Captain America: The First Avenger. Captain America thawed out with 27 points in our list. I felt like this movie was good in parts, had a decent villain but really was kind of boring. Now granted, I felt the same way about Thor on the first viewing and enjoyed it the second time. So maybe I will give this a second viewing as well.

Speaking of Captain America, The Winter Soldier comes in at Number 4 on the list. The Winter Soldier earned 29 points in total, edging out the first one by a mere two points. "The Winter Soldier’s story is so compelling that when the movie ends, you want to know more about this tragic character." said Jeremy.

And here we are going into the top 3 with the movie that started it all. In at Number 3 with a total of 35 points is Iron Man. "This was such a great movie to kick everything off and I loved Jeff Bridges as the villain who I didn't actually know was Jeff Bridges until after the fact. Also, this was pre-ScarJo, which just makes everything better." was Lori's thoughts on it.

And now on to Number 1... wait? What? We were just at 3. How could we be at 1? Well ladies and gentlemen, there is a tie! So in the words of Harvey Two Face Dent, I flipped a coin to see who would be last because it is the only true justice. They both earned 47 points total. All that is left and earning dueling top spots is Avengers and the Guardians Of The Galaxy.

Avengers became my all time favorite movie. I just enjoyed all the wit and sarcasm and Loki. Granted, there may have been a little too much pop culture references for the masses, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Jeremy's favorite part was "What makes the movie so amazing is the interactions between The Hulk and Loki. Mark Ruffalo does the green guy proud with his performance in this movie."

And while Avengers became my favorite movie, for Jason his new favorite movie is about a talking tree, a talking raccoon with an attitude and this guy who I met at a book signing years ago:

When asked why it was his favorite movie of all time, here's what Jason had to say "because of the characters, story and most of all humor. It wasn't a super hero movie... I hate when people say its a super hero movie. It is very Star Warish....Oh, it also has a pretty good soundtrack but in GotG 2 it better have a Foghat song!"

So there you have it. Feel free to contact me with your rankings and maybe I will post a few update with them! Thanks for stopping by!